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Knowledge Organization – making a difference

The impact of knowledge organization on society, scholarship and progress

ISKO UK biennial conference13th – 14th July 2015, London

The systematic and structured organization of knowledge and information has far-reaching applications, best known in the search, browsing, navigation and exploration of collections and networks. Throughout the last 2-3 millennia, organized collections of scientific and cultural literature have underpinned study and development. The orderly classification of basic entities and concepts has become fundamental to scientific education and progress. While search engines may dominate the internet, a great many intranets and records management systems still rely on classification. Semantic analysis is finding more uses online, and even Google uses knowledge organization (KO) techniques behind the scenes.

This conference aims to explore, justify and proclaim the continuing demand for KO. It will be a showcase for R & D that offers benefits for cultural activities and economic development, and an opportunity to consider the impact that KO has had, is having and will have.

Who should attend

This conference caters amply for practitioners alongside theoreticians, including consultants, researchers, teachers and students. Knowledge Organization is useful to systems designers as well as information managers, with applications in areas as diverse as web design, records management, digital libraries and asset management, network management, etc. Sharing ideas is the way to advance your own thinking – do come and join the discussions!

Some highlights

Alan Gilchrist will be our opening speaker, with a keynote address examining the role of KO in so many of the developments that shape today’s society. Over his long career as consultant, lecturer and editor, Gilchrist’s writings have been influential in the formation of today’s KO professionals and best practice, and were duly recognized by the University of Brighton in awarding him an honorary doctorate for contributions to information science. His perspective will set the scene for the conference.

To open our second day, a complementary keynote from Dagobert Soergel will pick up the theme and project it into the future. What difference should KO make to the next advances in economic, scientific and/or cultural development? Currently Professor of the Department of Library and Information Studies in the University at Buffalo, Soergel too is an influential writer; his 1974 book on indexing languages and thesauri sets out basic principles of KO and remains a classic.

A presentation from Patrick Lambe, founder of Straits Knowledge in Singapore, has been inspired by the ideals of Paul Otlet. Lambe will discuss the role that KO professionals could and should play in enhancing the positive social impact of the web of knowledge, and how our roles are shifting from the more passive role of descriptive cataloguers, to proactive designers of positive knowledge environments. Conference-goers who are moved to engage with this issue will get the chance during an interactive session, “What can WE do to make a difference?”

Joseph Busch, Founder and Principal of Taxonomy Strategies, will talk about how global classification systems have inspired content organization on the Web. He’ll address the big questions about classification that come up again and again in his work with many different organizations.

“Using Knowledge Organization Systems requires proper tools to manage them” is the declaration of Johannes Keizer and Caterina Caracciolo from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). They will describe latest developments behind AGRIS, the international information system for agricultural science and technology. AGRIS has become a KOS-based Linked Open Data web application underpinned by VocBench, a state of the art editor for KOS enabling automatic alignment of vocabularies. As well as a practical demonstration, we shall hear about the philosophy and community behind VocBench.

Paul Cleverley; Simon Burnett: The best of both worlds: Highlighting the synergies of combining knowledge modelling and automated techniques to improve information search and discovery in oil and gas exploration. (40 mins)

Joy Siller; Taline Babikian: The politics of taxonomies (40 mins)

Panel/discussion moderated by Conrad Taylor: What can WE do to make a difference? (60 mins)

Fatemeh Pazooki; Mohsen Haji Zeinolabedini; Sholeh Arastoopoor: Practical steps to incorporate RDA in Iran: The proposed model based on views of cataloguers of the National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran

ISKO is a not-for-profit scientific/professional association with a mission to promote the theory and practice of organizing knowledge and information. The emphasis in our UK Chapter is to build bridges between the research and practitioner communities, for example at our regular and very popular afternoon meetings. You can see past and future events at Our Events, together with slides and sound recordings for most presentations. The proceedings of our previous biennial conferences are available there too, in electronic media.

Enquiries

Please contact us at info@iskouk.org if you have enquiries about the conference.

Click on the session title below to find full details, including a link to each of the corresponding presentations. As well as seeing abstracts and author details, you may download the slides and papers provided. Audio recordings will be made available as soon as possible.

Event Report

With its theme celebrating the impact of KO, this conference attracted speakers and audience from all over the world – New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil and USA as well as our closer colleagues in diverse countries of Europe. An informal social meet-up the Sunday before helped newcomers break any ice. Thereafter, topics ranged from the organization of radio archives and image metadata to the tools for linking vocabularies and other resources, the intrinsic value of information and the need for an ethical stance in performing our duties.

In his opening address Alan Gilchrist, whose personal KO career spans over 50 years, took us back to the dawn of civilization with his long perspective on the development of KO. After a racy tour de force through the advances that KO has enabled in the past, we reached current developments such as the Semantic Web and Linked Data. Gilchrist drew attention to the abstract nature of the matters studied in our field (Information, Knowledge, Language) and the fundamental necessity for creating and applying models that must be continuously updated. He warned also of today’s urgent need to tackle unstructured information and concluded, “In our technological age, suffering from communication overload, we must not forget that there is still much to do and that we are still capable of making a difference.”

That first keynote, highlighting what KO has done for us in the past, was balanced on the second day by another from Dagobert Soergel addressing the role that KO should have in the future, including "the opportunities that lie ahead for KO, and what difference it could really make for economic, scientific and/or cultural development". Soergel was clear and resolute:

“Knowledge organization is needed everywhere. Its importance is marked by its pervasiveness. This paper will show many areas, tasks, and functions where proper use of Knowledge Organization provides support for daily operations (such as treating patients, making a loan), learning and understanding, for sensemaking and meaning making, for decision making, for inference, and for discovery by people and computer programs and thereby will make the world a better place.”

As well as sketching a wealth of opportunities for the application of KO in tomorrow’s society, Soergel had some messages for KO professionals. He’d like to see us apply a “principle of unification,” in which we seek commonalities and convergences between different KO tools and schemes, while exercising discrimination when it is needed. There’s a big opportunity for KO to expand into new applications, he says, but to grasp this potential our people will need enhanced skills and competences. Will his vision of the future come to pass? The answer is in our own hands.

Another of the highlights attracting over 100 to register was a talk from star speaker Patrick Lambe inspired by Paul Otlet, pointing to a more proactive role for knowledge organization professionals. Imagine our consternation in London a week before the event, however, when from a holiday in Ireland our star reported that his leg was in plaster after a hiking accident. Not a life-threatening disaster, fortunately, but “No travel” said the doctors. Quick as a flash, our speaker brought his considerable media skills to the fore, and delivered his presentation by video. It was another spell-binder, magically weaving an ethical debate into Lambe’s account of some historical developments, and his exhortations to the KO profession. Apart from dazzling the immediate audience, the video is now online on YouTube <https://youtu.be/eT5WBSEfph8> for all of us (and our students) to enjoy.

As you can see from the busy programme above, it was a struggle to fit in all the valuable presentations that were offered, and sometimes discussion time was limited. In compensation, debate was welcomed during the lively panel session on “What can WE do to make a difference?” moderated by Conrad Taylor. This stimulated many suggestions for how the field and the profession of KO can and should advance. Thanks to Conrad’s efforts in simultaneously recording this (and all the other sessions), you can enjoy a blow-by-blow by following the navigation links above and downloading the audio files.

Slides of all 23 presentations are equally available. You can download a full paper for 13 of these, including four that will also be published in Knowledge Organization. Above you will also find the details of our five posters.

As our Chairman Judi Vernau concluded, this conference showed that knowledge organization and the KO profession are indeed making a difference. They have done so in the past; and have the opportunity to achieve more in the future. ISKO needs to play a key role in supporting the researchers, teachers and practitioners to realize our potential. All of us should use the courage of our convictions to step forward and seize the opportunities.